The United States' top intelligence agency, Federal Bureau of
Investigations (FBI) says that the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam
(LTTE) is the most dangerous and deadly extremist organization in the
world. The official website of FBI in its tops story said that LTTE is
far more dangerous terrorists outfit than al Queda, Hezbullah or even
HAMAS. Read more...

The meaning and purpose of
devolution

by Dr. Piyasena
Dissanayake

The devolution debate in Sri Lanka has once again arrived at
centre stage. Two recent developments have led to this: First the triumphant
march of the security forces into the LTTE’s heartland has made the pro-Eelam
lobby, both here and abroad, uneasy and are trying to persuade the Indian
government to ‘intervene’ in the Vanni operations and compel Sri Lanka to halt
it forthwith, and proceed instead with the implementation of the 13th Amendment
to the Constitution, the ultimate object being the rescuing of the Eelam
project;

Second, the politically enlightened sections of the community in
the country have begun to question the need to perpetuate the provincial council
system imposed upon us by India because it has no useful function to perform. A
leading weekend newspaper, for instance, editorially posed the question "Are we
going to be saddled with the Provincial Council system for ever merely because
that is the wish of India?"

The Oxford Dictionary defines the term devolution as "delegation
of power to local administration". Besides, the concept of devolution is
universally used to signify the process whereby certain powers and functions of
government are transferred from central institutions that are representative of
all the people, namely, parliament and the central executive (parliament in the
case of the executive presidency or the cabinet of ministers in the case of the
Westminster system) to certain peripheral units.

In the case of unitary states, it is essential that the delegation
of such powers and functions has to be considered in terms of the following
three headings:

(a) Why devolution is considered necessary?,

(b) What are the
peripheral units to which powers should be devolved? and

(c) What are the powers that need to be so devolved?

The answer to (a) is that in order to enable the residents of a
given region to look after their own local public affairs instead of by a
distant centre, because it is obvious that a local centre for the administration
of subjects and functions of immediate concern to its residents will be able to
handle them quicker and with the added advantage of the first hand knowledge of
the local socio-economic environment.

If devolution is solely for this purpose there cannot be any
serious objection to it. In fact, such a step has to be encouraged. Given that
this is precisely the purpose of devolution answering (b) and (c) poses no
difficulty at all.

However, the devolutionary process referred to in the 13th
Amendment to the Constitution is intended to be used for an entirely different
purpose, namely, as a solution to a so-called ethnic problem presumed to be
existing in this country. It is precisely this hidden intention, as it were,
that has bedevilled this entire matter and led to much confusion, not only in
the minds of the public, but also in the minds of politicians.

Neither the 1972 Constitution nor the 1978 edition of it contained
any hint of devolution. In the case of the 1972 Constitution, supreme
legislative and executive powers were centralised in the National State Assembly
and the Cabinet of Ministers; and in the current Constitution these powers are
vested in the Parliament and the Executive President and his Cabinet of
Ministers.

On the other hand, there has never been a demand for devolution
from any segment of the country’s population as envisaged in the 13th Amendment.
It was India that imposed it on us in pursuance of her hegemonic designs which
required, inter alia, the creation of a strong pro-India dominated unit covering
one third of the country and 60% of the coast line closest to India, not to
mention the strategically important Trincomalee harbour.

India’s designs in regard to this particular aspect of her
national policy have now been amply documented, the latest revelations being
those contained in the Jain Commission Report and in the memoirs of a former
Indian High Commissioner to Sri Lanka, J. N. Dixit. Moreover, India has neither
a clear perception of the intricacies involved in the so-called ethnic problem
referred to in the 13th Amendment which it professes to solve, nor the genuine
interest to do so.

In regard to the so-called ethnic problem referred to above, it
must be pointed out that there is no ethnic problem in this country in the sense
of a problem arising solely from the fact of ethnicity. Although there are five
different ethnic groups in it, namely the Sinhalas, Sri Lankan Tamils, Muslims,
Malays and Tamils of recent Indian origin, only the Sri Lankan Tamils complain
of an ethnic problem. It is clearly an imaginary problem which arises from the
vainglory and the unrealistic notions that they hold about themselves. For
example, the Sri Lankan Tamils seem to consider themselves as a separate nation
- separate from the rest of the Sri Lankan nation consisting of the five ethnic
groups referred to above; they also claim to have the right to
self-determination. Both of these claims were put forward by them at the Thimpu
Talks in 1985, and were decisively rejected, as inadmissible, partly for want of
historically recognised evidence to establish the former, and partly because
their claim to self-determination runs counter to the letter and spirit of the
United Nations Resolution 1514 (xv) which clearly states that "one group of
people living in an independent and sovereign state does not have the right to
determine their political status independently of the rest of the people living
in that country and does not(therefore) have the right to secede from the
existing state".

Devolution can therefore be justified only if it is to be utilised
for the purposes referred to in paragraphs 2 and 3 above, namely, as a means of
enabling the local residents in a given locality or district to have a voice in
matters that are of immediate concern to them. In this particular sense,
devolution is not a new experience to Sri Lanka, for the decentralisation of
administrative powers of the central government goes back to the Colebrook
Reforms of 1833 under the British Colonial rule when certain administrative and
development functions were delegated to the Government Agencies in District
capitals. Along with the Government Agencies, elected Municipal Councils, Urban
Councils, Town Councils and Village Committees functioned side by side. This
system worked fairly effectively until the imposition of the provincial council
system under the 13th Amendment. The provincial councils tend to mirror the
Central Government and have therefore become superfluous with no specific
function to perform, particularly since President Premadasa appointed 274
District and Divisional Secretaries to function side by side the provincial
councils.

It must be emphasised that this country being a small island of
just over 25,000 square miles (roughly 1/16th of the size of the Province of
Ontario in Canada) does not pose any serious problem of administration,
especially in this age of rapid communication when the remotest parts of the
country could access the centre or vice versa in a few seconds. One does not,
therefore, see the logic of further proliferating the number of bureaucratic
institutions and cadres to administer it. The country already has 517
institutions charged with purely administrative functions, spread throughout the
country as follows:

Provincial Councils 08

Municipalities 14

Urban Councils 38

Pradeshiya Sabhas 183

District Secretaries 25

Divisional Secretaries 249

The first four categories of these institutions are elected bodies
and are reported to consist approximately 5500 elected representatives at four
different levels with their own substantial administrative apparatus. The others
are centrally run establishment with large bureaucracies. Very often there is
duplication and even triplication of functions between them, with the inevitable
result that public funds and human resources are fritted away when the national
need is to conserve and channel them into development. Sri Lanka is, perhaps, a
notorious example of a developing country that spends a larger proportion of its
revenue on routine administrative functions thereby seriously restricting funds
for national development.

What is now needed therefore is to reconstitute the entire local
government structure after a comprehensive study, preferably by a competent
Presidential Commission, with a view to achieving two fundamental objectives:

(1) Provide for the effective participation of the local
population to actively engage in the formulation of peripheral development plans
under a District Council system, periodically elected by the people and define
their powers and functions. In doing so, certain vital functions such as
finance, defence including the police, foreign relations, land and land use,
irrigation, telecommunication, ports and harbours, civil aviation, archaeology,
natural resources and education must necessarily be reserved for the central
government;

(11) The establishment of a truly efficient and capable
administrative machinery to implement these development plans. For the
convenience of effective administration and implementation each development plan
may be confined to the existing administrative district.

Our own experience of the working of the Provincial Council system since 1987
has proved that the province is too large a unit for efficient administration
and, that almost all provincial councils depend largely, if not solely, on the
Government for funding.

What is really happening
in Sri Lanka today is that a blood thirsty racist group led by
some misled Tamils called LTTE is terrorizing against the Government
of Sri Lanka and its people irrespective of their ethnicity with an
intention of carving out a separate state. There is no conflict as
such between Sinhalese and Tamil communities in Sri Lanka. In fact,
the majority of the Tamil community lives in peace and harmony among
the Sinhalese population through out the country apart from the
Northern part of Sri Lanka. The entire Sinhalese and the Muslims
population who lived in the Northern area for centuries were either
killed or chased away completely by the LTTE Tamil Tiger terrorists.
At the moment, not a single Sinhalese or Muslim is living in Jaffna,
but, many thousands of Tamils are living in Colombo in peace with
the other communities. Based on 2001 census, the Tamil population in
Colombo district is 12.1% (see
2001 census). So, who is discriminated ? Tamils or Sinhalese? Do
you need more evidence ?

The United States' top intelligence
agency, Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) says that the Liberation Tigers of
Tamil Eelam (LTTE) is the most dangerous and deadly extremist organization in the
world. The official website of FBI in its tops story said that LTTE is far more
dangerous terrorists outfit than al Queda, Hezbullah or even HAMAS.
Read more...